Thread: Boat tails
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Old 07-25-2008, 02:02 PM   #6 (permalink)
aerohead
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chopping

Quote:
Originally Posted by trikkonceptz View Post
So if I understand you correctly, by chopping off the back end of a pleasure cruiser (Like most are), you lose nothing? Except weight or additional mass in the water?
It's not that you don't loose,it's just that it's an acceptable tradeoff.In my installment on aft-body/boat tails I mentioned an "embryonic transom hull"attempted on a racing yacht.It was basically a truncated boat tail,as Kamm recommends for cars,but the design blew up in the boat-builders face.By chopping the tail off where they did,they were attempting to "prune the wetted area",the most significant aspect of a boats drag(friction drag).But the cut off created so much turbulence behind the transom,the rudder was rendered useless.They couldn't steer the boat! So it appears that for boats, there is a limit as to how much of the tail can be removed,before diminishing returns.Bear in mind that this was a racing yacht,built for the America's Cup,built for high-performance,with no pretense as to practicality if used as a pleasure yacht.
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